KUALA LUMPUR (Jan 4): Malaysia recorded 1,741 new Covid-19 cases today, marking the 26th straight day of four-digit increases, with seven more deaths, according to the Ministry of Health (MoH).
This raised the total confirmed infections in the country to 120,818, almost 12 times the 10,219 cases that were recorded less than four months ago on Sept 20 last year, when the third wave of Covid-19 infections began here.
The seven new fatalities recorded also pushed the death toll to 501.
Health director-general Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said Selangor accounted for the majority of the latest infections with 687 cases, followed by Sabah with 303 cases, and Johor with 295 cases.
Meanwhile, a total of 1,010 recoveries were reported, lifting total recoveries so far to 98,228.
As new recoveries came in lower than new infections, this pushed the current number of active cases — which carry high transmission risks — to 22,089 from 21,365 reported on Sunday.
Among the new infections, eight were imported. Three involved those who travelled from Egypt, while the rest were from Indonesia (one), India (one), Pakistan (one), Morocco (one) and Congo (one).
Dr Noor Hisham also announced that Covid-19 infectivity rate in the country, known as R-nought (R0), now stands at 1.11 — versus 2.2 on Sept 20.
R0, an indicator of how contagious the infection is, shows the average number of people who will contract the disease from a single infected person.
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